Factors Causing Health and Safety Hazards at Construction Sites

The Construction industry is prone to risk to health and safety hazards. Construction workers should have the knowledge of health and safety and apply the knowledge while working. The main objective of this paper was to review and to identify the factors that cause accidents at construction sites and the methods to improve health and safety. The review revealed that lack of awareness about site safety and negligence of workers in wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) were the main causes of poor safety practices. It is necessary to create employer’s and contractor’s interests in safety management and enhance awareness on possible risk factors to reduce these risk factors among workers. Effective implementation of training and safety awareness programs among construction workers is vital to improve health and safety of construction workers.

Water Quality in Pokhara: A Study with Microbiological Aspects

Obviously, water management is challenging issue in developing world. Dwellers of Pokhara use water from government supply along with deep borings and other sources as well. Nowadays, people are also showing tendency towards more use of processed water. In spite of its importance, quality analysis of water has been less emphasized by concerned sectors in our cities including Pokhara. The study aimed for qualitative analysis of water in the city with focus on microbiological aspects. For this purpose, results of laboratory examination of water samples from major sources of government supply, deep borings, hospitals, academic institutions as well as key water bodies situated in Pokhara were analyzed. Since water borne diseases are considered quite common in the area, presence of coliform bacteria was considered for the study to assess the question on availability of safe water. The result showed that all the samples during wet seasons of major water sources of water in Pokhara were contaminated by coliform bacteria. Likewise, in all 20 locations of Seti River, the coliform bacteria were recorded. Similar results with biological contamination in all samples were observed after laboratory examination of more than 60 locations of all three lakes: Phewa Lake, Begnas Lake and Rupa Lake in Pokhara. The presence of such bacteria in most of the water samples of main sources during wet seasons revealed the possibilities of spreading water related diseases. Again, microbiological contamination observed from significant number of bottled water samples as well as boring sources clearly alarmed the preoccupied belief in such supply of water. On the other hand, fluctuating water quality of academic institutions and hospitals questioned on the priority of the management and seriousness against possible spreading of water borne diseases. For obtaining the safe water, various treatment options have been recommended from World Health Organization (WHO) with chlorination in top priority due to affordability and simplicity. Urgent execution of such option could be important with due consideration of negative aspects from the possible byproducts. However, proper implementation of filtration technique and planning of further advanced technology could be valuable for fulfilling the need of metropolitan dwellers to get wholesome water for their daily consumption.

Predicting Academic Performance of Engineering Students Using Ensemble Method

One of the common problems that most of the engineering institutions face in recent times is poor academic results. The statistics of the IOE semester result show that since 2009 A.D., the average pass percentage has been reducing in an average from 50% to 40% and moving towards decreasing scenarios. The study aims to predict an engineering student's academic performance based on their past educational records, demographic factors, family backgrounds, and other related factors. Firstly, a predictive model is built using the traditional classifiers Decision Tree, SVM, and Linear Regression, which had shown good performance in similar types of study. After that, we have implemented one of the popular ensemble Methods, voting, which is known for improving the individual classifier's performance. Voting classifier combines the predictions of base classifiers by averaging those predictions. The result revealed that the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score had been considerably improved by using ensemble voting than that of the individual classifiers. The data used in the study was collected directly from the hard copy personal files of each pass out student of Paschimanchal Engineering Campus, Pokhara between the years 2004 to 2015 AD.

Impact Analysis of 220 Kv And 400 Kv Transmission Lines on The Integrated Nepal Power System

Power is an essential requirement for the economic development of any country. To maintain the generation of electric power at an adequate level the power has to be transmitted in a proper form to the consumer. For determination of line losses, voltage profiles and expansion of system, load flow analysis is most essential tools. This paper deals with the impact analysis of new 220 kV and 400 kV lines on Interconnected Nepal Power System (132 kV grid) in Electrical Transient Analyzer Program (ETAP). It represents the present scenario of the power system of Nepal and their impact analysis. Load flow result of existing 132 kV line shows that there is about 44.56 MW active power losses in the transmission line before any compensation techniques. After the Optimal Capacitor Placement, in the existing transmission line the active power loss decreases to about 34.224 MW as well as the voltage profile at each bus improves. The load flow result of the under construction 220 kV and 400 kV lines on the existing line shows that the total system loss would decrease to about 27.445 MW with the voltage profile improvement. The simulated model, result and analysis are presented in this paper.

Seismic Capacity Assessment of Unreinforced Brick Masonry Building Performed According To Eurocode

Brick Masonry Building with cement sand mortar is a common type of building typology in Nepal. Regardless of being one of the eldest construction technology, the behavior of masonry building is still a matter of study. The uncertainty in the behavior of masonry structures is due to material heterogeneity, complex behavior under different loading conditions and may be due to less research in this arena. Different modeling strategies are used and proposed worldwide to design and to identify the seismic performance of Masonry Building. The analysis strategy ranges from the simple linear method, equivalent frame method, static nonlinear method to dynamic nonlinear, which may be chosen according to engineering design aims and research purpose. In this attempt, authors choose two degrees of freedom 3D model of Unreinforced Brick Masonry Structures which catches both overturning and hysteresis mechanisms due to the shear response implemented by the TREMURI program with static nonlinear procedures. This verified method of modeling and analysis is applied to assess the performance of three different Unreinforced Brick Masonry buildings of the same plans with different numbers of storey.

Investigation of Confinement Effects for Determining Moment Curvature and Interaction Diagram of Reinforced Concrete Column

This paper presents the relevance of using various material models to represent the inherent material non-linearity of the cross-section in generating moment curvature relationship. Further, confinement effects are imposed on geometry and P-M diagram is constructed of typical cross-section of column adopted in Nepal. Also, the modelling capability and user defined modelling aspects in terms of section, material behavior is assessed and suitability of modelling criteria to depict the actual displacement capacity is studied. It was observed the ultimate curvature of the un-confined concrete section considered was obtained approximately to be 0.16 per m while for studied confined material models the curvature was obtained approximately to be 0.66 per m. This increase in curvature is due to the confinement effect of the lateral ties. It was observed that the loss of strength of concrete in cover is compensated by use of the confinement since gain in axial and bending capacity of the confined concrete in comparison to unconfined one in compression control region. Hence, it is suggested to adopt the confined material model as user-defined for generating hinge property for non-linear analysis of the structures.

Seasonal Variability of Historical and Projected Future Climate in the Kathmandu Valley

Anthropogenic activities are the major drivers of climate change and the climatic variability is the major threat for the world development especially in Nepal. The Kathmandu Valley (KV) is the most urbanized capital city of Nepal that has sensed the climatic variation in terms of increase in temperature, precipitation, runoff, and flood for few decades. For the adaptation of climatic variability, historical and future climate change is depicted by the trend, seasonal, and yearly variation analysis using climate models based on observed data. Historically, minimum temperatures of the all seasons are in increasing and the seasonal average rate of precipitation in the KV watershed is declining. After analysis of the projected future climate using climate model (ACCESS-CSIRO-CCAM, CNRM-CM5 and CCSM4) with two representative concentration pathways (RCP) scenarios (i.e., RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), minimum and maximum temperature in the future (up to 2050) is increased by 0.66°C – 0.6°C in RCP 4.5 and 1.21°C –1.04°C in RCP8.5 scenario. The rise in temperature means the warmer day will be increased and the erratic behavior of the precipitation will be expected in the future and the basin is expected to be drier in dry season and wetter in wet season. The analysis provides the alternative information for the planner for better planning, management, and adaptation strategy.

Rainfall-Runoff Modelling of the West Rapti Basin, Nepal

A hydrological model helps in understanding, predicting, and managing water resources. The HEC-HMS (Centre for Hydrological Engineering - Hydrological Modelling Systems, US Army Corps of Engineers) is one of the hydrological models used to simulate rainfall-runoff and routing processes in diverse geographical areas. In this study, a semi-distributed hydrological model was developed using HEC-HMS for the West-Rapti river basin. The model was calibrated and validated at each outlet of sub-basins and used to simulate the outflow of each sub-basins of the West Rapti river basin. A total of eight rain gauge stations, five meteorological stations, and three hydrological stations, within the basin, were used. The simulated results closely matched the observed flows at the three gauging stations. The Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency indicated the good model performance of the simulated streamflow with the observed flow at two stations and satisfactory model fit at one station. The performance based on percentage bias and root mean square error was good. This model provides a reference to study water balance, water resource management, and flooding control of the West Rapti basin and can be replicated in other basins.

Users’ Satisfaction with Domestic Water Supply in Nepal – A Study in Lekhnath Small Town Water Supply and Sanitation Project

Water Supply and Sanitation has been a priority of Government of Nepal. Various types of urban and rural water supply and sanitation projects are now being implemented within the Government, private and NGO sectors. The normal practice of measurement of satisfaction by service providers is to measure consumers’ satisfaction on past performance. The survey design could vary from survey questions to unstructured interviews and everything in between using comparative and non-comparative scales. In comparative scaling, the respondents are asked to compare one product against the other while non-comparative scaling is used to evaluate a single product. In this study, Likert Scales is used in this study for measurement of customer satisfaction on water supply. The higher level of satisfaction with water supply is expected to be positively related to several factors such as satisfaction with water quality, and other parameters such as hours and timings of water supply, tap pressure, quantity of water supplied, responsiveness and communication of management and water tariff. The respondents’ level of satisfaction indicates that about 41 percent of respondents were neutral, they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with water services, while about 36 percent of respondents were satisfied with water services. The satisfaction scale of overall satisfaction with water services was 3.29 while 1.0 indicates strongly not satisfied while 5.0 indicate strongly satisfied. The various aspects that influence satisfaction among users which include hours and timings of water supply, tap pressure, quantity of water supplied, responsiveness and communication of management and water tariff as well as redresses of customer complaints have been examined. This study focused on the users’ satisfaction of Lekhnath small town water supply and sanitation project and the study was undertaken to analyze the current users’ satisfaction of the Lekhnath small town water supply and sanitation project. The result showed that the satisfaction level of users’ is above neutral but these were not in satisfying level. The characteristics/aspects of the service that contributed to users’ satisfaction including hours and timing, pressure, quantity and quality of water while there was slightly less satisfaction with regard to complaints about water supply.

Streamflow Variations across Nepal during 1986-2015

This paper presents a picture of the streamflow variation in major hydrologic stations across Nepal during 1986-2015 in two periods; before and after 2000. Our study selected 27 high-quality hydrologic monitoring stations maintained by the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), Government of Nepal distributed across the country, representing a wide range of basin size, from ~308 to ~54100 km2. We compare the flow duration curves (FDCs) for two periods, T1: 1986-1999 and T2: 2000-2015. The study quantifies the changes of different streamflow indices including minimum, maximum, average daily streamflow, different percentiles and top 10, 20 and 50 maximum daily streamflow. Many studies reported that the climate (such as temperature and precipitation) showed an abrupt variation during the late 90s in the central Himalayas. This study explores whether similar effects are observed in the streamflow of the Himalayan catchments. The results of the study show a mixed pattern of positive and negative changes for different streamflow indices. However, about 60% of analyzed station (i.e. 17 out of 27) showed the positive deviation of the maximum daily streamflow meaning more extremes were observed in the latter period compared to the former period. Seven stations revealed > +20% shift in the maximum daily streamflow from period T1 to T2. In particular, East Rapti at Rajaiya showed more than 80% increase with respect to T1 which deviated from an average of 304 (ranging from 123 to 682) m3/s to an average of 555 (ranging from 171 to 1260) m3/s. Overall, about 10% of increment could be found on time-sliced averaged maximum daily discharge between two periods. Most importantly, the inter- and intra- annual variation of extreme streamflow show a clear tendency of the elevated peak streamflow recurrently over time.